by Jane (July 1973) Parts
1 2 3
4 5
6
Part II
During
the first several months of work with Dr. C, who was our final choice
among the abortionists interviewed to work with the new service, most
of the abortions were performed by him and a nurse in motel rooms
or the patient’s home.
After
a woman was counseled, we would tell them her name, her phone, how
much money she had, and relevant medical Information we had learned.
They would take it from there.
The nurse
would tell the patient when and where to meet. They would perform
the abortion and call us when it was all over. They were doing about
10 abortions a week for us at this time, up to three on a given day.
The wall
of mutual distrust was high at first. Although Dr. C agreed to let
us know when a particular woman would be done, he would not let us
know where. We could know him and the nurse only by code names and
could reach them only through their answering service. He kept medical
techniques a top secret, but was always reassuring and readily supplied
general information.
They supplied
and dispensed all drugs. We knew the names and properties of the
drugs, but had no idea of how they were obtained.
We had few medical problems with Dr. C in the first few months.
Occasionally women complained of cramps, and there were one or two
with minor infections. But for the most part, the women were well
satisfied.
In addition,
Dr. C kept his word and did an occasional free case. According to
reports from the women, free cases were treated no differently than
the paying ones.
For several
months, while the medical situation was stable, we concentrated on
organizing the counseling service—recruiting and training new
counselors, spreading the word to new groups of women, raising money
for the loan fund and trying to figure out some way to deal with long
term abortions.
During
the organizing period, we struggled continually to relate the politics
of abortion to the rapidly growing women’s liberation movement.
One strong faction In the movement considered any service organization
to be charitable rather than political. Several groups considered
abortion to be genocide.
While
we could accept being illegitimate before the law, we needed a solid
base of support in the women’s movement to survive, emotionally
as well as operationally.
Then the
coalition that was to become the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union
formed and quickly made clear its support for the service. While we
decided not to affiliate formally with the Union, we worked together
closely, the union organizing support groups and working to change
public opinion about abortion while we worked to make abortion available.
Two major
factors caused us to re-direct our attention from counseling and
making referrals to specifically arranging abortions and handling
medical details.
- First was
the increasing number of women who sought the service. Second was
the problem of long-term pregnancies of 12 weeks or more.
- We were
now referring up to 12 abortions a week to Dr. C. The higher volume
and Jane’s demands for quality care and follow-through put
strains on him.
Occasionally
he lost a phone number and the woman would become frantic; some women
were rushed by the nurse and became rightfully angry at us.
So
we pushed for more responsibility, more authority and more control,
and Dr. C gradually and reluctantly assented.
We
began to set up schedules ourselves, and to personally deliver women
to a motel and pick them up afterwards. Sometimes we would reserve
one room and schedule several women for it, saving them the additional
cost
Jane—our
code name for the counselor who was taking calls and coordinating
activities on any given day—became the contact point on working
days. She knew where each woman was supposed to be and how the abortionist’s
schedule was running. If there was to be a long wait, a counselor
would wait with the woman.
Dr.
C still insisted on protecting his secret identity. We had to leave
the motel room before they arrived, and stay away till they had gone.
It was important, he maintained, that no one ever see him in connection
with any actual abortion— that way no one could be forced to
identify him in court.
We
were still a long way from doing paramedical work, but we were learning
more about abortions. For example, we learned a simple D&C took
no more than one-half hour from the time the nurse knocked on the
motel door until they both left.
We
saw women ten minutes after their abortions were completed, and they
were healthy and happy. They were up and about, bleeding very little,
and very hungry. It gave us confidence, as well as the desire to
expand our scope.
About
one month after we began doing the scheduling, we had an experience
that made use quit using motel rooms altogether.
A
woman named Marie was being done in a fancy Southside motel one busy
Saturday. She was only about 10 weeks pregnant, very cooperative
and there seemed to be no problems; But halfway through the abortion
there was a heavy pounding on the door and a man’s voice yelled:
“Come
on out of there, baby killer!”
The
woman whispered, ”Oh, no. That’s my husband. He promised
he would stay away.” The pounding stopped momentarily and then
started again. The nurse tried to quiet the man through the chained
door, while Dr. C worked to finish the scraping. (Most problems with
early abortions are caused by an incomplete job.)
By
the time the abortion was completed, the man was screaming that people
in the motel room were killing his wife. The nurse helped Marie clean
up, while Dr. C threw the instruments into a bag.
There
was a silence outside, so they grabbed the bag and got ready to make
a getaway. But as soon as they unlocked the door, the man pushed
his way in, yelling that he was going to kill the baby killer.
Suddenly
the woman jumped out of the bed, pushed past all three and ran down
the hall in her bathrobe. Her husband ran after her while Dr. C and
the nurse took off in the opposite direction, around the corner and
down the elevator to the lobby, trying to look calm and inconspicuous.
As
they entered the lobby, the man was coming down the stairs. He saw
them and yelled in the crowded lobby: “There’s the baby
killer! I’m going to kill you.”
Dr.
C clutched his bag and ran out the door, the man in hot pursuit.
He dodged through cars in the parking lot, jumped across hedges and
ran for blocks between buildings and down alleys before he escaped.
He
called Jane, breathless, from a gas station, and within moments a
counselor picked him up and took him to her house. The nurse arrived
a few minutes later.
By
now, all pretense about concealing the identity of the abortionist
was over. It felt so safe to be in a private home instead of a motel
that everybody— several counselors, the nurse and the abortionist—all
relaxed together.
It
was immediately agreed that we would have to find an alternative
to motels.
It
was also understood from that time that the service and the abortionist
would have to work together more closely—as a team rather than
as adversaries—-in spite of the obvious conflicts and problems.
We
had not heard the last from the angry husband. He called Jane the
next day to say his wife was ill and he wanted his $500 back or he
would go to the police. We arranged to meet him downtown the next
day. Meanwhile, Marie’s counselor learned she was fine.
When
we met him, he looked like a mild-mannered business man. We offered
him a $250 refund if he signed a statement saying the abortion was
done with his full knowledge and consent.
He
refused, so we told him to send us the hospital bills and walked
away. That night he threatened to come after us with a gun if we
didn’t
pay the whole thing. We told him we would call the state’s attorney
and charge him with extortion if we ever heard from him again. We
never did.
The
incident taught us never to compromise with extortionists, whom we
ran across repeatedly through the years. We consistently refused
all demands for money, but agreed to pick up medical bills resulting
from the abortion.
The
next time the abortionists worked, it was at the home of a counselor.
And in spite of their discomfort at being so overexposed, the atmosphere
was as delightful as any abortion parlor could be.
Seven
women were done that day, in a setting where they could relax and
talk with other women in a similar predicament and when women walked
out of the bedroom, feeling fine and no longer pregnant, the other
six were noticeably relieved. They asked her questions and got first-hand
answers.
A
counselor was there all day also, answering questions, coordinating
with Jane, and generally helping out. Clearly, it was a better way
to do illegal abortions.
We
worked in private apartments and homes for the next six months, taking
on more and more responsibility for minor medically-related jobs.
We were now scheduling as many as 15 abortions a day, two days a
week, and it became necessary for the counselors to help with such
jobs as cleaning the rooms and sterilizing the instruments between
patients.
The
nurse was too busy now to sit and talk with the patients while the
abortion was being done, so counselors insisted on taking over that
job. Dr. C at first resisted giving up yet another area of his private
domain. When he finally agreed, he treated the counselor as a member
of the team, but reserved the right to limit the counselors to those
he knew and trusted.
Thus,
several of us who had been doing abortion counseling for almost eight
months could finally see an abortion first-hand. The procedure was
simpler, cleaner and faster than any of us had imagined.
The
job of holding hands and talking with patients, we soon realized,
was as important to many patients’ physical and mental welfare
as performing the-abortion competently, or as good
counseling and follow-up care.
We
learned a lot from watching Dr. C talk with the patients, putting
his initial effort into striking up a real two-way conversation before
the actual abortion was begun. He said it made the job more interesting
for him, as well as the patient.
Sometimes
the conversations were light-hearted and silly, sometimes controversial—he
might see a “peace now” button on her coat and say, “Listen,
l think every young man should have the opportunity to go to war.” We
saw women laughing during their abortion ... or arguing politics.
.. or singing.
We
copied his style at first, then developed our own. The most basic
rule was: talk to the person, relate to her needs and interests.
We tried steering the talk to women’s liberation, and discovered
that most women were intensely interested in that issue, although
many had never thought about it before being faced with an unwanted
pregnancy.
Some
women wanted a detailed, step-by-step description of the abortion
as it was going on, and others wanted to talk about anything but
the abortion.
It
was good to have the opportunity to pick up on special personal or
medical problems and report them back to the woman’s counselor
and Jane. For example, a woman who insisted during the abortion that
she wanted the baby but her mother wouldn’t let her keep it
was much more likely to have all kinds of problems afterward.
It
was also nice to be able to say to apprehensive women in a counseling
session: “You will never be alone. A counselor from women’s
liberation will be with you all the time, holding your hand and answering
your questions.”
It
was a practice that the medical system could well institute—having
a person in the room at all times whose primary job is to attend
to the emotional needs of the patient.
About
this time, we learned for certain that Dr. C was not a doctor, as
he had so vehemently maintained.
Having
to deal with this new knowledge pushed us into making more major
changes in the politics and activities of the service ... at a time
when the status quo was challenging enough.
Most
of the original counselors suspected this from the beginning—his
attitudes and manner, his conflicting stories about medical training,
his limited knowledge about medical subjects not related to abortion
just didn’t fit with “Doctor.”
But
as months went by and he did more and more abortions with relatively
few problems, we gave very little thought to the “doctor” question.
But
we were to learn that the question was very relevant to several new
counselors. Many of them had come into the service after it was already
functioning, and they apparently accepted the use of the phrases “Doctor
C” and “Doctor A” at meetings and training sessions-
The
original organizers had never stressed the question to new recruits...
maybe because there was so much other essential information to
communicate to new counselors in training sessions ... maybe because
we realized it was a potentially explosive issue and felt it was
more important at that time to build confidence and keep things running
smoothly.
On to Part III
